


The Invisible Burden

by hannahetesta



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, fivewivesweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4743200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahetesta/pseuds/hannahetesta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into life in the Citadel before the film. Inspired by the prequel comics. Cheedo-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invisible Burden

**Author's Note:**

> I’m posting this for the free day of Five Wives Week because I have no energy to make icons of the Five Wives like I’d originally planned. :p This is inspired by the prequel comics (that I haven’t read yet), and I’m always a slut for Chee Chee and her complex character development. I get so scared writing for this universe, please be gentle if I’ve screwed something up!
> 
> Special thanks to my friend Sarah for reading my first draft and suggesting I use “Waltzing Matilda”.

Lavender’s green, dilly dilly, lavender’s blue  
If you love me, dilly dilly, I shall love you  
Let the birds sing, dilly dilly, and the lambs play  
We shall be safe, dilly dilly, out of harm’s way

***

“Still blaming yourself for this?”

Cheedo pulled her stuffed elephant closer to her chest, staring at the wall. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“It’s not your fault, Cheedo.”

“Go away.”

Angharad’s fingers were brushing her hair aside. “Cheedo -”

“Go away!” She flopped backwards onto her bed. “Doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?!”

“It’s not good for you to keep doing this to yourself.”

“GO AWAY, SPLENDID!” Cheedo was still facing away from her, but she knew saying that would make her leave. It always did.

Sure enough, Angharad’s soft footsteps were moving further out of the room. “I’ll be back later to check on you.” Her voice was thick, restrained.

The ragged pink elephant’s right ear was torn a little, and playing with it made the tear bigger. Cheedo stopped just short of taking a good chunk of it off. Tears were running over the bridge of her nose and onto her hair. She knew she’d have a headache once she stopped crying.

Despite what Angharad and the others insisted, she knew that being there was making everything worse. The Immortan was getting impatient with waiting for it to be “her time”, as he put it. He took it out on them, and didn’t make it a secret; she saw the marks on their skin, saw their tears, heard their pained cries. They were protecting her from whatever he had planned for her, but she didn’t want it anymore, not at their expense.

The four of them came in later to braid her hair and speak in quiet tones, coddling her. “We have to do this. You’re the only one left that that smeg, that…schlanger hasn’t infected.” The Dag always had a way with words, her teeth bared as she spoke. But why was that important? Why did it matter if he wanted something from her? He gave her shelter, food, water, books…she knew she was much better off than the other people who lived at the Citadel, even if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of them for some time. Why not give him what he desired? He didn’t have to keep her there, he was doing it because…

“If we looked any different, we’d be out in the wasteland like the rest of the Wretched,” Angharad said. “Furiosa told me that he gives them water for half a minute every so often before shutting it off.”

“That’s awful.” Capable’s brow creased. “How do they survive?”

“False hope. Hope that they’ll get more soon. But no one knows when that will be.” 

“And to think, we bathe in the stuff,” Toast said, winding a piece of her gauze around her finger. “No wonder she called us spoiled.”

What does she know? Cheedo wanted to say. Imperator Furiosa thought she knew everything. She was terrifying, but Cheedo wasn’t going to say so. She instead hid behind the others, glowering at the taller woman, mentally pushing against every word she said. 

“We should refuse to use it.” Angharad’s jaw was set. “It’s not fair that we have so much when so many people have next to nothing. What makes us so special?”

“What can we do, though?” Cheedo’s voice sounded tiny and weak, even in her own ears. “He won’t allow it.”

“We can try, can’t we?”

Their protest earned the other four something so vile they refused to speak of it afterward. But the next day, five new sets of white gauze were sitting on their beds. That meant he was sorry, didn’t it?

The only one who touched hers was the Dag, and all she did was smear it in the dirt and tear it to shreds. “He thinks he can just forget about what he does to us, the fucking cowlick…”

Cheedo had hid hers under her sheets, running the soft fabric between her fingers, waiting to be left alone so she could admire her new clothes in privacy. It was still a novelty to her, receiving new things so often. She could still remember a time when she was out in the heat, sand coating her mouth, the sun unforgiving. Days without food, without any reason to continue living. 

“Cheedo, we agreed we’re not going to accept anything new,” Angharad told her later.

“Maybe you agreed to that. I didn’t.” They’d gone and made a decision without her, like always. She was the odd one out, the one who never argued against the Immortan’s generosity.

“Doesn’t it bother you that we’re being treated like queens while thousands of people are dying of hunger and dehydration?”

Cheedo folded her arms, trying not to cry. “Why do you even care?”

“He won’t keep us here forever. Once we’ve given him children, he’ll cast us out, hook us up to machines. He uses us like he uses the War Boys and the Wretched.”

“That’s not our fault…”

Angharad gave her a fierce look. “Then who killed the world, Cheedo?”

***

He wanted to hear her sing. Miss Giddy had been teaching her on the black thing with the ivory squares - a piano, they call it. Capable was learning the same thing, but on her gee-tar, a funny looking wooden instrument with strings. Cheedo used her voice, learning how to use pitches and octaves and to put it all together with words to create music. 

“The old bastard loves music from his…” Miss Giddy didn’t finish, clearing her throat. “He wants you to sing some tepid battle anthem that sounds like something scraping on metal.”

Cheedo looked at the paper she’d been handed with the strange symbols she hadn’t gotten used to yet. “This doesn’t look like what he wants…”

“That’s because it’s not. I’m going to tell him it’s too hard for you, not at the level you’re at. But I’ll be dead before he forces one of you girls to do something like this.” She looked away for a moment, her face hard.

“Miss Giddy?”

“I’m fine. Look over the words and we’ll start.”

A week later, the Immortan was in the vault with Rictus. It was always hard for her to tell what he was thinking or feeling, but she was waiting for him to hit her as she tried to keep her voice from wavering.

“Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,  
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree,  
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil,  
You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me…”

Rictus clapped when she was finished. “Pretty!” he said.

The Immortan held up a hand and he ceased immediately. “Rictus, you are dismissed.” 

As soon as the vault door shut behind his son, he turned his steely eyes to her. “Why didn’t you learn the song I gave you?”

“I…Miss Giddy didn’t…”

“You were supposed to learn that song, Fragile.”

“…Didn’t you like the one I sang?” she asked meekly.

He stood, knocking his chair over, hands clenched. “I give you food and shelter and this is how you choose to thank me?!”

“I didn’t give it to her.” Miss Giddy was in front of him. “It sounded like absolute rubbish!”

“YOU DARE TO INSULT ME?!”

Cheedo was pulled back by Angharad at that point, the other three running to help Miss Giddy. Cheedo sat in the corner behind her bed, hands over her ears, Angharad’s arms around her. “We won’t let him hurt you, Cheedo.”

Once he had left and the others were treating their bruises, she finally spoke up. “I don’t want you saving me anymore…”

“We’re not going to allow him to treat you this way,” the Dag said. “No one deserves it.”

“Maybe if you didn’t resist…maybe if you just accepted that he wants to help…”

“Is this a life you want, Cheedo?” Angharad held a cloth to Capable’s cheek. “Is this a life you want for your children? Do you want to constantly live in fear?”

“But it’s safe here. He takes care of us.”

“He treats us like his property. But we are not things.” She gritted her teeth. “We are not things.”

They all spoke of leaving, of what they’d do if they could be free. But Cheedo didn’t say anything, instead plaiting her hair and humming to herself to drown them out.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda,  
You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me,  
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil  
You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me


End file.
